Becky and Elbert Higginbotham went from the target of a nationally publicized search and rescue to wanted fugitives Monday when Arizona authorities issued a nationwide arrest warrant for the couple on methamphetamine-related charges.

But the Arizona pair averted arrest here by slipping out of Jackson County in the same 35-foot motor home in which they and the Stivers family of Ashland were stranded for 17 days in snow on a backwoods forest road to the coast.

Higginbotham said Friday he believed that Arizona authorities were planning to "make an example" of him by filing the charges the day after the Higginbothams and Stiverses were rescued in a reunion broadcast throughout America.

Navajo County Sheriff Gary Butler said Higginbotham was right.

Allowing the subject of a widely publicized missing persons case to skirt drug charges sets a bad public example of how authorities handle methamphetamine crimes, Butler said Monday.

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"There’s been such a media outcry on this thing we can’t just let them go," Butler said.

"That’s the wrong impression to give to the public," Butler said. "We will prosecute. Our biggest problem is cost."

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters on Monday agreed to arrest and extradite the Higginbothams on the warrants, even offering to drive the couple to Utah to help reduce the cost to Navajo County, Butler said.

But Winters could not arrest the Higginbothams until his department received a copy of the warrants or the warrants were entered in the National Crime Information Center, making them available to all law-enforcement officials via computers.

The warrants were not entered into the NCIC until Monday.

Pete Stivers, Becky Higginbotham’s son, said Monday that the Higginbothams had left Oregon but he did not know when.

Family members told law enforcement the Higginbothams left Sunday night, but investigators received conflicting information on whether the pair were headed south to Arizona or actually had headed north, Winters said.

"Now they’re fair game for any law-enforcement agency that stops them," Butler said.

The warrants list bails of $25,000, but they list no states from which Navajo County will pay for extradition, Butler said.

The couple’s brown-and-white Dolphin motor home is 35 feet long and has Arizona plates 171-TDH.

If the Higginbothams are stopped and arrested somewhere between Oregon and Arizona, Butler will have to set up any extradition arrangements with the arresting agency, he said.

"It would be easiest for all of us if they came back and turned themselves in to, as (Elbert) said, ‘face the music,’ " Butler said. "But we got no guarantee they’ll come down and turn themselves in."

Elbert Higginbotham, 54, is wanted for possessing methamphetamine for sale or use and for possession or use of a weapon in a drug offense, both felony charges. He is also wanted on a misdemeanor charge of drug paraphernalia.

Becky Higginbotham, 44, who was listed in the warrant as Rebecca Ann Bess, was also charged with possessing methamphetamine for sale or use and possession of drug paraphernalia.

If convicted, both Higginbothams could be eligible for probation because they have no other drug offenses in Arizona, Butler said.

A Navajo County Sheriff’s Department police report states that Elbert Higginbotham surrendered a plastic bag containing five individually wrapped bags of methamphetamine when contacted by police April 21 at a residence in Heber, Ariz.

The report states that Elbert Higginbotham admitted to police that he used methamphetamine. The weapons charge was based on police finding a shotgun at the residence, where Elbert Higginbotham told police the couple were housesitting at the time.

Butler said the pair were released because they agreed to cooperate in the investigation as informants, but that was the last police in Heber, Ariz., saw of the Higginbothams until their March 21 rescue in Oregon.

The Higginbothams, Pete Stivers, his wife, Marlo Hill-Stivers, and their two children headed from Ashland to Gold Beach via backwoods roads March 4 when their motor home became bogged down in snow on a narrow stretch. They ate old Y2K rations and watched the search for them unfold on their small television before Stivers and Hill-Stivers decided to hike out and find help.

Their story has drawn intense media interest, during which the Higginbothams’ drug past unfolded.

Reached Monday at his Ashland home, the 29-year-old Stivers pleaded to be left alone and admonished the media for using his family’s rescue against them.

"You were all trying to smash my family when we came off that mountain," Stivers said. "Shame on all of you."

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com.